The invention relates to cooling system units. In particular, the invention relates to providing controlled cooling for a computer system for use in environments and applications that place high demands on system reliability, for example in the telecommunications industry.
Deregulation and privatization is causing unprecedented competition in the worldwide telecommunications market. This climate of fierce competition has meant that service providers must introduce new, more sophisticated and user-friendly services at an accelerated pace to retain or attract subscribers, while not compromising traditional telecommunications company (telco) service quality.
These pressures of competition have also placed high demands on Network Equipment Providers (NEPs). Traditionally, NEPs have designed, built and supported proprietary computing equipment, as the strict telco requirements could not be met by the commercial computing sector. Those requirements include the so-called Telcordia Technologies Network Equipment Buildings Systems (NEBS) tests. However, due to the lead times required to design and test such proprietary equipment, and the cost of supporting such equipment, there is a need to find another route, at least for the supply of the more cost and performance sensitive sectors within the telco industry.
A major concern of the telco sector is the reliability of systems under environment conditions as set by the NEBS tests.
In order to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of the telco industry, and in order to provide equipment at reasonable cost and within reasonable time scales, it would be desirable to use as many off-the-shelf computer system components as possible, rather than having to design and test each system in its entirety from scratch. For example, it would be desirable to select components designed for the commercial computing sector. However, such equipment is typically not designed with the stringent requirements of the telco industry in mind. Accordingly, it is an aim of the present invention to address the provision of cost-effective equipment that can meet technical demands of the telco environments, for example as regards providing reliable operation under adverse operating temperatures, while also meeting the modern commercial demands of that environment.